Robert Michael Roegner

1. 7/12/1953, Detroit, Michigan USA

 

Spouse/Family

Wife: Kristi Carol (nee Sandmann), b.12/25/1955 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA

1. 8/16/1975

Children: Amy Dawn (Hamlin) (1979); Jeremy Jon (1981); Stephanie Lynn (1984);

Tracy Lee (1989)

 

Dates of Service Field Call Assignment

1981-90 Liberia Evangelistic Missionary

Leadership Training

1990-97 LCMS World Missions Area Secretary: Africa, Europe, Middle East

1997-99 Lutheran Bible Translators Executive Director

2001-08 LCMS World Mission Executive Director

 

Biographical Summary

Robert (Bob) Roegner knew he wanted to be a pastor from an early age, and he attended Concordia Junior College in Ann Arbor on a pre-ministerial track.  There he met Kristi Sandmann, and after dating for a time they were married in 1975.  By that time Bob had graduated with an A.A. degree and was studying at Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from which he would receive his B.A. degree in 1977.  From there he enrolled at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne and received his M.Div. degree in 1981.  Both Bob and Kristi had worked during the first years of their marriage, but with their daughter Amy born in 1979 and son Jeremy in 1981, Kristi chose to stay at home with the children.

 

Even before their marriage, Bob and Kristi had talked about where they might go when he was finished with seminary, and both agreed that they would be interested in and willing to take a call to foreign mission.  During their placement interview in Bob’s final year, the placement director indicated that he had heard from many people that the Roegners would be well-suited for mission and asked if they would take a call abroad.  After further discussion and prayer, they responded affirmatively, and by January 1981 they received a call to serve in Liberia.

 

In June of 1981, shortly after Bob’s graduation, the family traveled to Liberia.  Bob was assigned as an evangelistic missionary to the Kisi people, a nearly unreached people group.  Bob and Kristi began with six months of learning Liberian English, then began learning Kisi through an immersion program called Language Acquisition Made Practical (LAMP).  This allowed them to work on their language skills while living among the Kisi people and conducting ministry.  Bob was helped by a language student who would visit their home and converse with him; it was after about three years in-country that Bob was able to preach his first sermon in Kisi.  One major reason for the success of the initial mission in this area was that Lutheran Bible Translators (LBT) had already sent translators into the area.  Although the translators had left, there was a Kisi grammar available and parts of the New Testament had been translated.  This was an invaluable resource for Bob in his evangelistic work because the people already had Scripture in their own language as well as the tools to learn to read it.  (The Kisi New Testament was fully translated by the late 1980s, and work has begun on the Old Testament.)  The missionaries’ intentional work to learn and respect the culture in which they were serving also had a very positive impact on their evangelistic work.

 

As the first LCMS missionary to begin work in the area, Bob’s first task was to survey the Kisi-speaking area to determine where mission work should start.  He determined to begin with the southernmost clan of three, where he would plant congregations and train leaders to serve them.  The church-planting strategy was to enter a village and talk with its chief and elders to request permission to gather a congregation in the village.  At the same time, Bob (and later other missionaries) would ask the elders to choose a few of their brightest young men who would receive a basic education as well as theological training.  They also asked what needs the village had that they might be able to fill – whether it was education, agricultural help, better water, medical assistance, etc.  This practice of reciprocation between missionaries and the people of the area villages helped the mission work grow quickly and created good relationships.

 

For leadership training, missionaries would have the young men travel to a central location every Saturday (all walked, some for up to four hours, to reach the site).  For a full day these men were trained in catechetical studies, doctrine, Scripture and homiletics.  They prepared to conduct worship and Bible class and to preach the next day during the Sunday service, and they learned about pastoral counseling.  Once every three months, a joint service would be held for all the villages of the area, at which the missionaries would preside.  Three to five thousand people attended these services, and they were festive occasions, with baptisms, communion, and a meal served after the service.

 

Bob continued doing evangelism and training during his entire time in Liberia (1981-90), but in 1984 he was asked to take on the added responsibility of Missionary Counselor for the mission in Liberia.  He essentially served as team leader of the mission, helping to formulate and oversee the main structure of the work and mission strategy in the country.  This involved travel all over Liberia to talk with and assist other missionaries.

 

While Bob undertook evangelism and leadership work, Kristi’s main work in Liberia was with their home and family.  The Roegner’s younger three children – son Jeremy, daughter Stephanie, and son Tracy – were born in Liberia, and Kristi home-schooled all four children as they grew old enough to begin their education.  Through her dedication and efforts, their family was able to provide a good example of Christian family life for those around them.  Kristi also became a de facto nurse for the people of the village in which they lived.  Women would often come to her or bring their children to her when they were sick, and she could often help in some way because of her greater level of education and knowledge.  For extreme cases, she drove the sick to the nearest hospital.  Her life and work showed the love of Christ both to her family and to those around her.

 

The Roegners served in Liberia for nearly ten years.  In 1990, Bob was asked by LCMS World Mission to take the position of Area Secretary for Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.  As administrator of these fields, he traveled several times a year to mission fields, in order to develop plans for mission; facilitate relationships with partner churches; and work with missionaries to make sure their needs were filled.  The Roegners’ children began attending school once they returned to the U.S., and Kristi took a job cleaning houses, which gave her the flexibility to keep up with their kids’ schedules.

 

Bob continued as Area Secretary until 1995, when he answered a call from Lutheran Bible Translators to move to Aurora, Illinois and serve as their executive director.  In this capacity he did strategic planning and leadership for over two hundred people doing translation work across the globe, as well as goal setting, creating a team structure for the entire organization, and facilitating relationship with other organizations.  Bob also did fundraising and financial goal-setting for LBT, which was undergoing financial difficulties at the time.  His work was exciting and fulfilling, but in 1999 he decided to find a position that would allow him more time with his family and require less travel.  He became pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Westwood, New Jersey.

 

After two years of performing pastoral and leadership duties for this large church, Bob began to consider other opportunities.  It so happened that it was just at this time that LCMS World Mission contacted him again, requesting that he take the position of executive director for World Mission.  He accepted the position, tasked particularly with creating a viable mission outreach program that would energize the church for outreach and evangelism.  In addition to his administrative duties of shaping mission vision, planning, and fundraising, Bob began work to create such an outreach program.  The end result was the Ablaze! movement with its partner fundraising effort, Fan Into Flame.  Ablaze! took advantage of the upcoming five-hundred-year anniversary of the Reformation to create mission goals for the year 2017 and to inspire people across the LCMS and its partner churches to mission.

 

Seeing this movement through its early stages took significant time and energy, but by 2008, Bob felt that his gifts for leadership and vision planning had been well-utilized in his position as executive director and that he could better focus in energies in other ways.  He stepped down as executive director of World Mission and, with a short hiatus, began to search for other mission opportunities.  He is now considering church-planting possibilities in the U.S. and seeks to use his passion for evangelism and outreach to continue to serve the Lord.  Kristi, meanwhile, in 2004 began working with Christian Friends of New Americans (CFNA), a group that ministers to newly arrived refugees and immigrants into the St. Louis area.  She became leader of the women’s ministry for CFNA for a period of time.  In 2007, she began working at Christ Memorial Lutheran Church as missionary to small groups for that congregation.  The Roegners continue to find new ministries and new ways of contributing to the Lord’s work of mission both locally and all over the world.

 

Nota Bene

While doing mission work in Liberia, Bob received a Mission Certificate from Fuller School of World Mission (Pasadena, California) in 1983 and a Linguistic Certificate from the Summer Institute of Linguistics at Oklahoma University (Norman, Oklahoma) in 1984.

 

Awards Bob has received include the Great Commission Award from Concordia University, Irvine, California, in 2003 and an honorary Doctor of Laws (L.L.D.) degree from Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2004.

 

Bob has written over 150 articles on leadership and mission, with special emphasis on unreached people and Islam.  He has made over 250 presentations and speeches on leadership, mission, missiology, world religions, world cultures, Islam, and the post-modern culture in America.

 

Phase 2 Information

Biggest missiological issue faced?

The biggest issue Bob and other missionaries faced in Liberia was that of finding a “redemptive analogy” – finding an analogy for the saving grace of the Gospel of Christ within the culture of the people to whom they were witnessing so that the Gospel message would truly come alive for them.  Bob was eventually able to find an analogy through a practice the Kisi people had when someone was caught stealing or committing some other crime against the community.  The standard punishment for a crime like stealing was to bring the thief to the marketplace on a busy market day, strip him down to his underclothes, and beat him – not to death, but painfully.  Bob, in discussion with some leaders-in-training of the church, decided to set up an example of forgiving grace.  They arranged that one of the young Christian men would be “caught” stealing from Bob (an even worse crime than usual because of Bob’s status as “the missionary”).  The punishment was to be meted out accordingly.  On the next market day, the young man was taken into the marketplace and stripped, but before he could be beaten Bob called for attention and stated that although the young man had committed a crime against him, he would take the punishment in his place.  Everyone who had gathered around was, of course, shocked, and the idea that a person who had been the victim of a crime would volunteer to take the offender’s punishment was the inroad Bob and other Christian leaders used to explain God’s mercy and Christ’s sacrificial love for humankind.

 

Later, as executive director of World Mission, Bob found that the most pressing issue he dealt with was doing mission outreach in an environment like that of the U.S., in which Christianity is on the decline. Worldwide, Christian missions (particularly American Christian missions) must deal with an environment that’s increasingly hostile to Christianity as well as to Americans.  Issues between Christians and Muslims are a major concern in this context.

 

Most significant contribution during missionary service?

As executive director of LCMS World Mission, Bob was able to create a mission vision within the denomination which has caused people to rethink mission outreach and their own role in spreading the Gospel of Christ.  Many of the ideas that make up the Ablaze! movement have come from his time in mission and from consideration of the issues facing contemporary mission.

 

Connection to today’s mission?

Bob’s work on the Ablaze! movement has been furthered by others as the movement continues to expand and be promoted by the LCMS.  It is a movement geared to raise the awareness of Lutherans and other Christians of their own mission responsibilities both far away and very near.  The idea is that mission is done in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” – that is, in one’s immediate surroundings; among those who are geographically and culturally nearby; among those who are close but of a different culture or language; and worldwide.  The movement gets people excited and engaged in missions in a way that Bob hopes will continue even when the Ablaze! goals are reached.

 

Lessons Learned

• It can be very difficult to make any changes in an environment like the LCMS that’s steeped in tradition.  New movements are successful only when their proponents are not willing to give up; those who want to do something new have to be willing to endure a certain amount of criticism and remain focused on a vision for the church.

 

Best Practices

• Careful observation and understanding of the culture in which one works is very important.  The mission in Liberia was very successful, in part because the missionaries were very culture-aware.  For instance, in a tribal culture it was necessary always to work first with the chief and then with the elders of a village in order to begin mission work.
• Taking care both of physical and spiritual needs of the people to whom one brings the Gospel.
• The “redemptive analogy” is very important.  The Gospel message cannot touch the hearts of people if missionaries are unable to communicate it in ways that make sense within a given culture.
• For contemporary missions to be most successful, it’s necessary to have a vision, a strategy and a plan.  It’s good when missionaries are flexible and can adapt to unexpected situations, but missionaries and their sending churches also need to focus on specific goals.

 

Phase 3 Information

Inspiration for entering foreign missions?

Bob knew he wanted to be a pastor from a young age.  He remembers hearing from his parents a story about his leaving church at five years old and proclaiming, “I’m going to be a pastor!”  At the time, he probably mostly liked the idea that people would stand up and sit down at his direction and listen while he spoke.  However, his desire to minister to people and to share the Gospel continued to grow as he grew older, and he enrolled in a pre-ministerial track when he entered college.

 

When Bob and Kristi met and began talking about being married, they also discussed what they wanted to do with their lives and careers.  Kristi’s father was a pastor and she grew up with a heart for mission.  Both Bob and Kristi thought that they would possibly be interested in foreign mission work, but they made no specific plans for how that might happen.  When the seminary placement director told them that he had heard others say they would be well-suited for mission, their inclination toward mission seemed to make sense, and after some prayer and consideration they decided that this truly was God’s calling for their ministry.

 

Quotation by/about or brief story:

• The story of Big Joe:  When the Roegners were moving to the village of Foya Tengia, the business manager for the mission in Liberia made plans for mission buildings to be built and hired workers to do the building.  The man who was chosen to be the site foreman was named Big Joe.  He was called “Big Joe” because there were two men named “Joe” working on the building, and Big Joe was older than Little Joe.  Big Joe was in charge of the building, but unknown to the missionaries he was also an important man in the Kisi society, because he had been chosen as the next witch doctor for the area – the person who would communicate with the bush devil and tell people what they needed to do in order to appease the spirits or to get something they wanted.

 

Building work commenced, and Bob began holding church services in Foya Tengia.  Many people from the village attended, and Big Joe was one of them.  Although he was deeply involved in the traditional spiritual beliefs of the community, the Holy Spirit was already working in his heart to stir up curiosity about what the missionaries were teaching.  Every Sunday he came and listened to the Scriptures and to what the missionaries taught about the Gospel.  And when he came to work the next day, each week he asked questions about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and about the Holy Spirit. But every week he would again go back to his work as a witch doctor.

 

Once the period of teaching Scripture and presenting the Gospel was over, a Sunday service came when Bob asked the congregation who would come forward to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and become a Christian.  No one responded at first.  At least a minute went by before one person stood up and walked forward – and that person was Big Joe.  His heart had been changed by the Spirit and he declared his intention of becoming a Christian.  This was an extremely important day for the mission in Foya Tengia because this man who was so immersed in the traditional spiritual culture was announcing his willingness to give it up in order to experience a life of faith in Christ.

 

For a time, the path of faith to which the Spirit had led him was difficult for Big Joe.  Some of the men in the society threatened to kill him.  His wife threatened to leave him.  But he persevered in his faith and always prayed for his family and those around him.  He asked Bob to keep praying for his wife and family.  Because of the strength of his example, many people in Foya Tengia were brought into the church.  At home, gradually, because of the strength of his faith and how it changed him, many members of Big Joe’s family also came to Christ.  He no longer used anger and violence against his wife and children but addressed any problems they had in a spirit of love.  His wife and children grew to respect his faith, and his wife and most of his children became Christian as well.  Both Big Joe and his wife became leaders in the church at Foya Tengia.  Big Joe served as business manager for the congregation, and his wife was chosen as leader for many women’s groups.

 

Big Joe died some years after the Roegners left the mission field.  His faith and his example gave him the assurance of eternal salvation in Christ and led many others to the same blessed assurance.